LVHS Principal blog post 09-13-2017 – Parent Portal is open

I want to thank all of you for your patience while we finalize our transition to our new gradebook. I am happy to inform you that we just activated Parent Portal Gradebook and you can now look into your students gradebooks. Please remember that we have 40 classes that are Standards Based Grading and the rest continue to be the traditional gradebooks for this year. For traditional gradebooks it will look very similar to you from last year, minus the normal upgr​ades that Icampus does on their look and functionality. The rest of this email is specific to what the Standards Based Gradebook looks like and some quick information to help you better understand it. For a more thorough explanation please join us on October 3rd at 6pm here at LVHS.

When you pull up a gradebook that is Standards Based you will see 3 sections​, a Standards Summary, a Grading Task Summary and the Detailed Standards with the supporting evidence for each standard.

The ​Standards Summary list all of the standards and to the right will include the overall proficiency rating for that standard​. That score will only populate if there has been at least 3 pieces of evidence for that particular standard. Remember that those scores on a 4-point scale and have the following meaning:

The Grading Task Summary is what you are most familiar with. Here is where the conversion takes place and converts our proficiency scale scores to percentages and letter grades. It does that by averaging together the overall proficiency ratings for all the standards with a score in the Standards Summary. This letter grade and percentage will ultimately at the end of the term become the final grade.

The ​Detailed Standards section is where the all the individual pieces of evidence (assignments) are scored according to the standard they correspond with. This is where you can look at the individual scores and assignments. Please know that one of the philosophies of Standards Based Grading is that students have the opportunity to improve, make-up, retake any and all assignments to better their grade. If you are not please with a score, encourage your student to work with the teacher to improve that score. The ultimate goal is that every student perform at the highest level possible on each and every standard listed. That will probably not happen on the first score, but as you look at multiple pieces of evidence, hopefully you will see improvement and if not encourage your student to work with their teacher, as the most recent scores are given the most weight in power law.

We are very happy with the ease in which the information is converted back to a traditional grade. Please keep in mind that a teacher can only issue whole or half scores (ie: 4.0 or 3.5 but not a 3.75) however power law can then give it a variety of numbers per standard and all the individual standards are then averaged to get a number that may look like 3.76. That score would be rounded up to the nearest tenth and then converted to a traditional grade and percent based on the following scale: (Thus a 3.8 = 96%)

4.0 — 100%

3.9 — 98%

3.8 — 96%

3.7 — 94%

3.6 — 92%

3.5 –90%

3.4 — 88%

3.3 — 86%

3.2 — 84%

3.1 — 82%

3.0 — 80%

2.9 — 78%

2.8 — 76%

2.7 — 74%

2.6 — 72%

2.5 — 70%

2.4 — 68%

2.3 — 66%

2.2 — 64%

2.1 — 62%

2.0 — 60%

1.9 — 59%

1.8 — 58%

1.7 — 57%

1.6 — 56%

1.5 — 55%

1.4 — 54%

1.3 — 53%

1.2 — 52%

1.1 — 51%

1.0 — 50%

0.9 — 49%

0.8 — 48%

0.7 — 47%

0.6 — 46%

0.5 — 45%

0.4 — 44%

0.3 — 43%

0.2 — 42%

0.1 — 41%

0.0 — 40%,

Again, I thank you for your patience and understanding during this conversion and encourage you to work with your student to encourage them to work with their teacher to consistently improve their scores and ultimately their proficiency of the standards. After they have done that if you still have concerns or questions please contact the teacher directly or myself.